Here are five social media management tools that can make your life easier. What do you use to keep track of multiple social accounts? Let us in the comments below.

1. One Person, Many Networks

TweetDeck () is your best (and free) bet if you’re looking to manage all your personal social media profiles. TweetDeck allows you to connect across Twitter, Facebook, MySpace (), LinkedIn, Foursquare () and Google Buzz (). You can update all or just a few with the same status at one time.

The design is clean, user friendly and even makes some networks more fun. For example, it integrates Google Maps () into your Foursquare () feed, visualizing your friends’ checkins. You can also view photos and videos from within the tool.

As you might have guessed from the name, TweetDeck is best at managing Twitter accounts. It makes the experience more customizable by organizing feeds, mentions, messages and searches across columns.

TweetDeck is probably best when dealing with four or five accounts at a time (whether that be all Twitter accounts or a mix of the other networks it supports). Though the dashboard is generally easy to use, it can get bogged down if your streams have a lot of activity, making it difficult to keep up with updates and engagement.

Also worth checking out: Seesmic ()

2. Personalize Business Replies

CoTweet () is an excellent tool for small businesses or divisions of larger businesses that spread social media duties among team members and have a customer-service approach to engagement.

Like many SMM services, CoTweet allows updates and follow-up messages to be assigned to specific social media managers. This can make responses more relevant as team members with certain knowledge bases can handle appropriate questions and comments from followers. The responder’s initials are included at the end of the tweet, letting the follower know there’s a person behind the handle.

What’s different about CoTweet is its OnDuty status, which notes who is responsible for social streams at a certain time. Aside from organizing your SMM schedule, it allows for more passive monitoring. The person on duty can receive e-mails when something needs to be acted on, freeing him or her up to go to meetings or take calls while remaining aware of social media activity.

CoTweet supports Twitter and Facebook and recently launched an iPhone () app. The Standard edition is free and allows up to six Twitter accounts. The Enterprise version costs $1,500 a month but you can request a free demo.

Also worth checking out: Postling

3. All Monitoring, All the Time

Small to medium-sized businesses that have one or two dedicated social media managers should try HootSuite (). Its free version allows you to add five networks and supports Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare, MySpace, PingFm and WordPress ().

HootSuite is best for actively-managed accounts because its design focuses on streams, which are housed in customizable tabs. You have the flexibility to organize tabs by account, network or content, making it easier to monitor a specific type of feed more closely.

One of the greatest benefits of social media is finding out more about your audience. HootSuite takes this to the next level by providing a follower’s bio and Klout score along with links to his or her social media profiles. You can also create lists of followers you want to keep a closer eye on and increase engagement with.

Stats in the free version don’t give you much information, but paid subscriptions offer Google Analytics () integration and unlimited insights. Pricing starts at $5.99 a month and maxes out at $1,998.99 a month for the Enterprise package plus vanity URL service.

Also worth checking out: Scroon, Buddy Media

4. Analyze That

For agencies managing social media for several companies with high ROI demands, SpredFast has everything you need.

Its biggest advantage over other SMM tools is analytics. Measurement is determined by the amount of content distributed, how many people were reached and whether the intended audience was engaged. Spredfast integrates analytics from clicks by tracking bit.ly links as well as data from each social network. This information is formatted in presentation-ready graphs, which is ideal for agencies bringing clients up to speed on outreach progress.

Most useful is Spredfast’s benchmarking feature. Managers can compare social campaigns to other strategies in the industry or to the same type of campaign as it was run in another industry. As businesses continue to experiment with social media as an outreach tool, this context answers key questions about how to best leverage each network.

These first class analytics come with a hefty price tag; Plans range from $12,000 to $1 million a year.

Spredfast began as an in-house tool and went public in January 2010, then made a name for itself at Microsoft BizSpark Accelerator at SXSW. The latest version launched on Friday. Though the Austin, Texas startup has some big endorsements, it’s always good to be wary of the risks that come with investing in a newer company.

Also worth checking out: Radian 6, Objective Marketer

5. Big Business Made Easy

Franchise companies looking to maintain consistent messaging while giving local branches a hand in social media strategy should give Engage121 a shot. Though its competitors are few, Engage121 is best in its class at encompassing monitoring, broadcasting and engagement.

The tool is incredibly customizable and can support just about any site with a social presence. Corporate managers can create a company-wide promotion message and use mail merge to broadcast it with a local store’s name and address. Permissions may be set to allow a branch to approve a message from corporate before it is distributed to area followers, maintaining a local voice and brand consistency at the same time.

With the amount of buzz around big-name brands, monitoring and engagement are particularly challenging. Engage121 simplifies these with customized filters, giving managers total control over what types of messages they see. Just underneath each message is an engagement button. When clicked, a very user-friendly interface pops up where managers can easily respond to followers’ messages or start conversations with social media influencers.

Engage121 CEO Jon Victor said the analytics component measures social media in about 100 ways, depending on the different stats useful to corporate divisions and local branches. Pricing also varies with business needs. Individual stores generally pay $25 per month with a separate charge to corporate. If the company incurs the total cost, the price tag ranges in the thousands, depending on the number of outlets, Victor said.

Because virtually every aspect of the tool is customizable, you should have a strategy in place before jumping into Engage121. Its functionality seems endless and could be overwhelming without a set social media objective.

Also worth checking out: Valuevine

What’s Your Take?

Which of the above tools has worked for you? Are there any social media management tools that you could recommend for personal use? Business? Read more at mashable.com

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Twintig gratis iPhone-apps

Er zijn honderdduizenden apps voor de iPhone beschikbaar. Een deel hiervan is gratis te downloaden. Het is door de grote hoeveelheid apps echter lastig juist die ene leuke app te vinden. MacWorld helpt je daarom door een aantal leuke en gratis apps voor de iPhone op een rijtje te zetten. Dit artikel wordt geüpdatet zodra wij een nieuwe en gratis app tegen komen. Controleer dus regelmatig dit artikel om op de hoogte te blijven van de beste gratis iPhone-apps. Read more at macworld.nl